This has allowed the penguins to remain hidden from the world, until a team of researchers mounted an expedition there to investigate signs of nesting birds.

“Until recently, the Danger Islands weren’t known to be an important penguin habitat,” said Professor Heather Lynch, an ecologist at Stony Brook University who co-led the work.

However, this changed when scientists noted guano stains on Nasa satellite imagery of the islands – a tell-tale sign of a massive penguin colony.

To investigate, Professor Lynch led a team to the islands with the intention of counting the birds first hand.

As well as assessing the birds from the ground, the scientists made use of drones to take pictures of the island from above and count the hundreds of thousands of breeding pairs.

“The drone lets you fly in a grid over the island, taking pictures once per second. You can then stitch them together into a huge collage that shows the entire landmass in 2D and 3D,” said Professor Hanumant Singh, an engineer at Northeastern University who developed the drone’s imaging and navigation system.

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